libDeployPkg uses /tmp which is not safe during boot

[Scott Moser]

Looking at source code for linuxDeployment.c [1] and also looking at some logs, I'm pretty sure that the imc-customization path is using /tmp to create files. That is not safe during systemd boot as the tmpfiles cleaner may remove your files at any point.

 [1] https://github.com/vmware/open-vm-tools/blob/master/open-vm-tools/libDeployPkg/linuxDeployment.c#L69

The paste here has some of the confusing bits in the log:
 http://paste.ubuntu.com/p/MDvVSQwsTB/

Maybe those are normal/expected, but it really isnt' safe to use /tmp during boot.

For examples of such problems see
 bug 1727876
 bug 1707222

Ultimately, cloud-init started using /run/cloud-init rather than mktemp to avoid this.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 19.04
Package: open-vm-tools 2:10.3.5-3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.18.0-11.12-generic 4.18.12
Uname: Linux 4.18.0-11-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.10-0ubuntu14
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Dec 20 22:24:29 2018
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=C.UTF-8
SourcePackage: open-vm-tools
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

Thanks Scott for filing that with some details and examples, I'll mostly copy and paste that upstream for their consideration to fix it there.

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

Added there and a tracker here